Pedant County - Update 29/8/10

[tinman]

All mimic panels now completed and wired (except 1 led on the last panel cos I ran out of LED holders, typical !), as well as a main power panel and fusebox.



Of course the downside to that is I now have another 94 wires to connect up under the baseboard !



I've also made the incline for the track over the river, although I'm still waiting for it to dry out before I can rub it down and paint it, 3 days so far and it's still damp ! Dread to think what the heating bill's gonna be like cos I've had a 3kw electric radiator on permanently in there to try and dry it out quicker.



So the rest of the week's probably going to be spent sat underneath the baseboard armed with crimps, cutters & cable ties....

Sadly my assistant has just been admitted to hospital where she'll probably be for at least a week so I'm on my own for a bit (Question is, can I still remember how to make my own cups of coffee ???)

[tinman]

As there seems to be relatively little info on the use and connection of double slips I thought the following may be of help, not to the more experienced obviously, but to newcomers it might save a little bit of head-scratching.

When it came to wiring up the last of my mimic panels (the one with 2 double slips on it) I just automatically connected the left hand switch and LEDs to the left hand motor and accessory switch on the slip, and the right hand to the right hand, as per the pic below :-



On testing it immediately became obvious that what was being displayed by the LEDs on the panel bore no resemblance whatsoever to the actual route switching on track.

A study of the double slip itself made it clear why this was - switching the left hand point changes the exit on the right hand side, and switching the right hand point changes the exit route on the left hand side.

You could of course just change the LED connections between the accessory switches (which I initially did) but panel operation wasn't very intuitive as the panel switches were then changing the LEDs at the opposite ends, not what a noobie operator would automatically expect to happen !

For the clearest possible panel functionality I wanted the panel switches to control the LEDs directly above them, so to achieve this all that needed to be done was to swap all the wires over between the 2 point motors and accessory switches - wire the left hand switch and LEDs to the right hand point motor and accessory switch, and the right hand switch and LEDs to the left hand point motor and accessory switch like this :-



The panel switches now operate the LEDs directly above them, and what the LEDs indicate on the panel now exactly relates to the route switching on track

When you operate the left hand switch now, it switches the right hand point motor, which changes the route on the left. When you operate the right hand switch, it switches the point motor on the left, which changes the route on the right. The fact that the switches operate the opposite point motor to what you'd actually expect is irrelevant, once connected no-one needs to recognise that at all, as far as they're concerned the left switch changes the left route and the right switch changes the right hand routing, simple

Hope that saves someone a few minutes confusion in the future !!

[tinman]

So, now those double slips are sorted all mimic panels are fully fitted and working, all point motors and accessory switches tested, main power panel and fusebox fitted (in fact the fusebox has already saved my bacon cos while fault finding an inoperable point motor and LED I didn't realise my multimeter's leads were in the wrong socket, noob mistake I'm embarrassed to say, and promptly blew my "point power" and "panel power" fuses. Oops ! Still, at least I can say the fusebox is now also tested ).

I now just need to finish wiring the track droppers and turntable motor and I'm done with the track electrics.

I was going to leave the mimic panels to last but it dawned on me it'd be easier to complete the track power AFTER testing all the points and accessory switches electrically in case I had to lift track to replace anything.

[Dad-1]

Tinman,
Just too clever for your own good !!

Mimic panels and switches all beyond me - I just run 14 turnout motors on DCC addresses from my head, then nobody else can run my layout without me. One good way of not becoming redundant !! I do admire your progress .....

Geoff T.

[tinman]

Thanks Geoff, although you're selling yourself short there - the reason I went for mimic panels is because if I tried to remember addresses for all the points I'd be crashing trains every 30 seconds ! lol

it's a bit of a shame I'm wasting facilities the controller provides by in doing it that way, but I'd have to have a layout plan with all the addresses marked on it to look them up each time I wanted to operate a point which would make it a bit slow...

[tinman]

Well, a lousy winter health-wise meant very little got done, however under my supervision Rachel did get some practice on our small layout to see what works and what doesn't. The results are below :-







The grass is hanging basket liner which we have yet to enhance with static grass, the hedges, bush and gorse bushes are made from rubberised horsehair sprayed with glue and sprinkled with coarse foliage (I had major probs trying to find a decent supplier of horse hair so in the end I bought in bulk from the factory and am selling it on ebay if anyone wants any, it's a mega cheap and very realistic way to make hedges, bushes and trees - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Rubberised-Horse- ... 439f4b6db7 - 1 piece makes loads, and it's unbelievably quick and easy. I'll post a tutorial with pics a bit later.

Anyway, now I've got the shameless advertising out of the way .....

We've just begun work on the main layout once more today and it's given us a lot of enthusiasm seeing things starting to take shape so hopefully we'll get a fair bit done over the summer ! :-













I was quite pleased with how the tunnel mouths have turned out, although I haven't fixed them in place and blended them in yet.

Thanks for looking

[tinman]

A bit more work done, the base coat painted on the hills and rivers and some of the grass laid though a bit more trimming still needed....